Rules you can ignore, and those you can’t

Andy Du Port explores which rules need to be followed to the letter to avoid collisions at sea and considers those which can be safely ignored:

Saying ‘International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea’ is something of a mouthful, let alone learning all of them verbatim. Commonly called the ‘Colregs’, they are a fine example of comprehensive, logical and unambiguous rules which have been adopted worldwide by almost all countries with coastlines (the only two which have not are the Western Sahara and Taiwan).

In case you are yawning already – ‘Not another sermon on the Colregs!’ – this article is not about the rules themselves. Instead, it is more of a discussion about some of the rather perplexing wording which is open to interpretation and allows for some discretion. – Full report